David WayneFilmography

The Survivalist

Actors: Steve Railsback, Marjoe Gortner, Cliff De Young, Susan Blakely

Synopsis: This low-budget actioner is set in a world gone mad with the fear that WW III is imminent and centers on a survivalist who has stashed away a veritable armory of high-tech weapons to protect his family. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Poker Alice

Actors: George Hamilton, Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Tyrrell

Synopsis: We've been told that Poker Alice, a Boston-bred lady of means who managed a wild-west gambling hall and bordello in the 1870s, was based on a real person. She certainly seems real as portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor in this made-for-TV film (Taylor's first). After winning her house of ill repute in a Read More

Murder, She Wrote: Murder Takes the Bus

Synopsis: In one of the series' best episodes, Jessica (Angela Lansbury) and Sheriff Tupper (Tom Bosley) are taking a bus trip from Cabot Cove to Portland, Maine, when the vehicle makes a stopover at a roadside inn. Before long, one of the other passengers--a bank robber recently released from prison--turns Read More

Finders Keepers

Actors: Michael O'Keefe, Beverly D'Angelo, Louis Gossett, Jr., Ed Lauter, David Wayne

Synopsis: In this slapstick chase-adventure, some unlikely heroes try to outwit each other for possession of a huge stash of cash hidden on the train they are all riding together. The comedy is a little uneven here or at least not to everyone's taste, and the pace is fast-forward frantic. Josef (Ed Lauter) Read More

The Prize Fighter

Actors: Tim Conway, Don Knotts, David Wayne, Robin Clarke, Cisse Cameron

Synopsis: Tim Conway as woeful boxer Bags and Don Knotts as his dim-witted sidekick Shake are out to save a gym and do the impossible in this predictable, cliched comedy from director Michael Preece. The setting is the 1930s and Bags is trying to make it as a boxer. Gangster Mike (Robin Clarke) decides to Read More

An American Christmas Carol

Actors: Henry Winkler

Synopsis: Made up to look like a septuagenarian, Henry Winkler plays Benedict Slade, a Scrooge-like miser living in a tiny New England town during the Depression. Slade goes Scrooge one further by repossessing items from a poor farm couple and an orphanage on Christmas eve. While reading a copy of Dickens' Read More

The Girls in the Office

Synopsis: Filmed in and around Houston, Girls in the Office is an easily digested TV movie with an all-video-star cast. The office is in a large Houston department store. The girls are four in number: Susan Saint James, Barbara Eden, Penny Peyser and Robyn Douglass. The film follows the quartet as they try Read More

Lassie: The New Beginning

Actors: John Reilly, Lee Bryant, Gene Evans, David Wayne, Jeanette Nolan

Synopsis: Earl Hamner Jr. of The Waltons fame cowrote the teleplay for Lassie: The New Beginning with Jack Miller. The venerable female collie is now owned by two orphan children (Shane Sinutko and Sally Boyden). She accompanies the kids on a hazardous journey from Arizona to Southern California in search Read More

The Gift of Love

Actors: Timothy Bottoms, Marie Osmond

Synopsis: For her dramatic acting debut, singer Marie Osmond chose this sentimental adaptation of the venerable Yuletide short story The Gift of the Magi, previously filmed in 1952 as a segment of the omnibus feature film O. Henry's Full House. Set in turn-of-the-century New York, The Gift of Love casts Osmond Read More

Black Beauty, Part 2

Synopsis: The locale of Anna Sewell's 1906 novel Black Beauty was changed from England to Maryland in this five-part TV miniseries. Still, the script adheres to the basic chronology of the Sewell original. In Part One the wife of incapacitated farmer Tom Gray sells the frisky colt Black Beauty. In Part Two Read More

Murder at the Mardi Gras

Synopsis: Didi Conn, who skyrocketed to fame thanks to Saturday Night Fever (77) and You Light Up My Life (78), did nothing for her career with the made-for-TV Murder at the Mardi Gras. Conn plays a loopy young Philadelphia waitress who witnesses a murder during the New Orleans Mardi Gras celebration, but Read More

A Woman Accused

Actors: Chad Everett, Barbara Hershey, Howard Duff, Anthony Zerbe, Diana Scarwid

Synopsis: In the Glitter Palace was the first made-for-TV movie in which lesbianism was a crucial plot factor. Chad Everett stars as a defense lawyer and erstwhile detective, whose gay client is Barbara Hershey. She is on trial for murdering her slimy blackmailer (played by that master of sliminess, Anthony Zerbe Read More

Ellery Queen

Synopsis: Ellery Queen (also known as Too Many Suspects) was the 78-minute pilot film for a TV series based on the fictional intellectual author/sleuth created by cousins Frederick Dannay and Manfred Lee. Jim Hutton plays Ellery (the tenth actor to do so on screen!), while David Wayne is his police Read More

Return of the Big Cat

Synopsis: A cruel cougar terrorizes a pioneer family in California during the 1890s in this adventure. Fortunately, the unsettled settlers are soon protected by a friendly wild dog. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Apple Dumpling Gang

Actors: Bill Bixby, Susan Clark, Don Knotts, Tim Conway, David Wayne

Synopsis: The Apple Dumpling Gang stars Bill Bixby as Russell Donovan, a slick frontier gambler. In Runyon-esque fashion, he is compelled to look after three precocious oprhaned kids. He can't handle the responsibilities alone, so he agrees to an in-name-only marriage to hoydenish stagecoach driver Read More

The F.B.I. Story - The FBI Versus Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy Number

Actors: Harris Yulin

Synopsis: This somewhat clunkily titled TV movie was an offshoot of producer Quinn Martin's series The FBI. Robert Foxworth plays Depression-era desperado Alvin Karpis, who for nearly five years eluded capture while committing bank robberies, kidnappings and murders. Karpis finally comes acropper when the Read More

The Front Page

Actors: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Carol Burnett, Susan Sarandon, Vincent Gardenia

Synopsis: This third film version of the 1928 Ben Hecht/Charlie MacArthur Broadway hit The Front Page was the first one permitted to utilize all the salty profanities in the original play. Director Billy Wilder cast his two favorite leading men, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, as ace reporter Hildy Johnson Read More

Huckleberry Finn

Actors: Odessa Cleveland, Jean Fay, Kim O'Brien, Jeff East, Paul Winfield, Harvey Korman

Synopsis: One of Mark Twain's best-loved stories becomes a screen musical in this family-friendly adaptation. Mischievous Huckleberry Finn (Jeff East) is a 15-year-old boy who has long had a difficult relationship with his often violent father. When Dad tried to kidnap him, Huck decides to run away from Read More

Banacek: Ten Thousand Dollars a Page

Synopsis: This episode stars David Wayne as a reclusive, ill-tempered tycoon. While he doesn't suffer fools (or anyone else) very well, Wayne is devoted to his collection of valuable books. When one of his rarest volumes disappears from a supposedly impervious glass-enclosed case, troubleshooting detective Read More

Ironside: Downhill All the Way, Part 1

Synopsis: In the first half of a two-part story (originally telecast as a single two-hour episode), Chief Ironside is assigned to protect little Jerry Abbott, an autistic 10-year-old who has witnessed a murder. Not long afterward, the newspapers are reporting that Jerry himself has been killed--and that Read More

Ironside: Downhill All the Way, Part 2

Synopsis: In the conclusion of a two-part story, Ironside (Raymond Burr) has degenerated from a respected law enforcement officer to a seedy skid-row bum, apparently because 10-year-old murder witness Jerry Abbott (Lee H. Montgomery) was killed while in the Chief's protective custody. What even Ironside's Read More

The Streets of San Francisco: In the Midst of Strangers

Synopsis: This is the first of several episodes of The Streets of San Francisco in which the viewers bear witness to crimes in progress and are provided all the evidence virtually from the outset, placing them several steps ahead of Detectives Stone (Karl Malden) and Keller (Michael Douglas). In this case Read More

The Catcher

Actors: Anne Baxter

Synopsis: This unsold pilot film was reminiscent of the 1956 syndicated TV weekly The Tracer. Michael Witney plays the "catcher" of the title, a former agent of the Seattle Missing Persons Bureau. Now in private practice with his new partner, Harvard grad Jan-Michael Vincent, Witney hires out to people Read More

The Andromeda Strain

Actors: Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson, Kate Reid, Paula Kelly

Synopsis: The "Andromeda Strain" is a deadly extraterrestrial virus. It is brought to Earth when a research satellite crashes near a tiny Arizona town. Everyone in the community dies within days, except for a baby and an "insulated" drunkard. Recruited from labs all over North America, doctors Charles Read More

The African Elephant

Synopsis: African Elephant originally played in theatres as King Elephant.. The film is a straightforward, well-photographed documentary concentrating on....well, look at the title. Avoiding the obvious, filmmaker Simon Trevor focuses on the more curious aspects of elephant life. In addition to the mighty Read More

The Boy Who Stole the Elephant

Synopsis: Mark Lester, star of the 1968 Oscar-winner Oliver!, heads the cast of the made-for-TV The Boy Who Stole the Elephant. Lester plays a young employee of a 19th century travelling circus. He befriends the circus' elephant (played by "Margie"), which is appearing on loan. When the larcenous circus Read More

Lamp at Midnight

Synopsis: Adapted for television by Robert Hartung from the play by Barrie Stavus, Lamp at Midnight deals with the 16th-century conflict between the Catholic Church and Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. After exhaustive research, Galileo (played by Melvyn Douglas) concludes that the Aristotelean concept Read More

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: The Thirty-First of February

Actors: David Wayne, William Conrad, Elizabeth Allen, Staats Costworth, William Sargent

Synopsis: The coroner rules that the wife of advertising executive Andrew Anderson (David Wayne) died in an accidental fall. But after receiving an anonymous letter, police detective Sgt. Cresse (William Conrad) becomes convinced that Anderson murdered his wife. Arranging an elaborate hoax, the relentless Read More

The Big Gamble

Actors: Stephen Boyd, Juliette Greco, David Wayne, Gregory Ratoff, Fernand Ledoux, Sybil Thorndike

Synopsis: This adventure melodrama concerns Vic Brennan (Stephen Boyd), who persuades his family to put up money for him to leave Dublin for the remote African town of Jebanda in order to start up a truck-hauling business. The family agrees to give Vic the money under the stipulation that his cousin Samuel (David Wayne Read More

The Twilight Zone: Escape Clause

Actors: David Wayne, Thomas Gomez, Virginia Christine, Dick Wilson, Joe Flynn

Synopsis: Hypochondriac Walter Bedecker (David Wayne) would do anything to feel better -- including making a deal with the Devil. When His Satanic Majesty makes an appearance in the form of the jovial Mr. Cadwallader (Thomas Gomez), Walter enters into a contract whereby he will be given perfect health and Read More

The Last Angry Man

Actors: Paul Muni, David Wayne, Betsy Palmer, Luther Adler, Joby Baker

Synopsis: In danger of losing his job, TV-producer David Wayne hopes to cook up a real ratings winner by building a network special around the life and work of elderly doctor Paul Muni. For the past 45 years, the iconoclastic Muni has run a free clinic in the slums of Brooklyn. Muni has no time for Read More

Playhouse 90: The Jet-Propelled Couch

Actors: Donald O'Connor, David Wayne, Peter Lorre, Gale Gordon, Phyllis Avery

Synopsis: This semicomic Playhouse 90 episode was based on a true case history, as related in The 50 Minute Hour, a book by psychologist Dr. Robert Lindner. Although Donald O'Connor receives top billing in the role of Lindner's counterpart Robert Harrison, the real star of the proceedings is David Wayne as Read More

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: One More Mile to Go

Synopsis: One of the best of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents half-hours personally directed by Hitchcock himself, "One More Mile to Go" opens with a bitter argument between Sam Jacoby (David Wayne) and his wife Martha (Louise Larabee). Although the viewer is witnessing the quarrel from behind a window and Read More

Ruggles of Red Gap

Actors: Michael Redgrave, Jane Powell, Peter Lawford, Imogene Coca, David Wayne

The Sad Sack

Actors: Jerry Lewis, David Wayne, Phyllis Kirk, Peter Lorre, Joe Mantell

Synopsis: In his second solo starring film after breaking with Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis plays cartoonist George Baker's classic GI misfit The Sad Sack. Lewis' constitutional inability to do anything right brings him under the scrutiny of gorgeous Army psychiatrist Phyllis Kirk. She discovers that Lewis Read More

The Three Faces of Eve

Actors: Joanne Woodward, David Wayne, Lee J. Cobb, Edwin Jerome, Alena Murray

Synopsis: When Alistair Cooke shows up to introduce Three Faces of Eve, we know that the fact-based story will bear more than a little fidelity to truth. Joanne Woodward won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Eve, a young Georgia housewife suffering from multiple personalities. Eve's husband (David Read More

The Naked Hills

Actors: David Wayne, Keenan Wynn, James Barton, Marcia Henderson, Jim Backus

Synopsis: The talented David Wayne is afforded a rare movie starring role in Allied Artists' The Naked Hills. Wayne plays prospector Tracy Powell, whose all-consuming lust for gold motivates the plot. Heading to California during the '49 Gold Rush to try his luck in the mineral-rich mountains, Powell is Read More

The Tender Trap

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, David Wayne, Celeste Holm, Jarma Lewis, Lola Albright

Synopsis: Max Shulman and Robert Paul Smith's Broadway hit The Tender Trap is transformed into a beguiling Frank Sinatra film vehicle. Sinatra plays a Manhattan showbiz agent, Charlie Y. Reader, who enjoys the attentions of several willing young ladies. At an audition, Charlie meets aspiring actress Julie Read More

Darkness At Noon

Actors: Lee J. Cobb, Joseph Wiseman, Oscar Homolka, David Wayne, Keenan Wynn

Hell and High Water

Actors: Richard Widmark, Bella Darvi, Victor Francen, Cameron Mitchell, Gene Evans

Synopsis: Hell and High Water brings an intriguing Cold War slant to a standard submarine melodrama. Richard Widmark plays a soldier-of-fortune sub commander who agrees to sell his services to noted atomic scientist Victor Francen and his assistant (and daughter) Bella Darvi. Francen intends to prove that Read More

Down Among the Sheltering Palms

Actors: William Lundigan, Jane Greer, Mitzi Gaynor, David Wayne, Gloria de Haven

Synopsis: This colorful musical comedy was obviously inspired by the success of Broadway's South Pacific. Army Captain Bill Willoby (William Lundigan) is ordered to make sure that his men do not fraternize with the girls at a South Sea island base. His mission is forgotten when he himself falls in love with Read More

How to Marry a Millionaire

Actors: Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, David Wayne, Rory Calhoun

Synopsis: A remake of 1933's The Greeks Had a Word for Them, as well as a retread of 20th Century-Fox's favorite plotline, How to Marry a Millionaire was the first Hollywood comedy to be lensed in Cinemascope. Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe play three models of modest means who rent an Read More

Tonight We Sing

Actors: David Wayne, Ezio Pinza, Roberta Peters, Tamara Toumanova, Anne Bancroft

Synopsis: Tonight we Sing is the life story of legendary impresario Sol Hurok, impersonated herein by David Wayne. A lover of the arts, young immigrant Hurok despairs when he realizes he has no musical or artistic talents. Thus it is that, despite great personal and financial sacrifice, Hurok devotes his Read More

O. Henry's Full House

Actors: Charles Laughton, Marilyn Monroe, David Wayne, Richard Widmark, Dale Robertson, Anne Baxter, Fred Allen

Synopsis: This anthology film assembles five respected directors and a top-notch cast to bring a handful of stories by the great American author O. Henry to the screen. In The Cop and the Anthem, a tramp named Soapy (Charles Laughton) tries to get arrested so that he can spend the winter in jail Read More

Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie

Actors: David Wayne, Jean Peters, Hugh Marlowe, Albert Dekker, Helene Stanley

Synopsis: The upbeat title belies the film's often melancholy subject matter. Based on a novel by Ferdinand Reyher, Nellie stars David Wayne as a small town barber in the early 20th century. Wayne's bored wife (Jean Peters) leaves him for a city slicker (Hugh Marlowe), whereupon both are killed in a train Read More

The I Don't Care Girl

Actors: Mitzi Gaynor, David Wayne, Oscar Levant, Bob Graham, Craig Hill

Synopsis: Mitzi Gaynor plays legendary vaudeville headliner Eva Tanguay, whose signature tune was the bouncy "I Don't Care". The film's actual producer George Jessel costars as "himself;" the gimmick is that Jessel wants to produce a biopic based on Tanguay, but can't get a handle on the story until he Read More

We're Not Married

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Fred Allen, Victor Moore, Marilyn Monroe, David Wayne

Synopsis: Having supped full of success with the multi-storied O. Henry's Full House, 20th Century-Fox assembled another all-star "omnibus" film, We're Not Married. The unifying factor of this enjoyable seriocomedy is provided by justice-of-the-peace Melvin Bush (Victor Moore), who learns to his horror that Read More

With a Song in My Heart

Actors: Susan Hayward, Rory Calhoun, David Wayne, Thelma Ritter, Robert Wagner

Synopsis: With a Song in My Heart is the story of popular 1930s songstress Jane Froman, here portrayed by Susan Hayward. We first see Ms. Froman as a humble staff singer at a Cincinnati radio stations, but it doesn't take her long to rise to the uppermost rungs of network radio fame. Jane gratefully marries Read More

M

Actors: David Wayne, Luther Adler, Howard Da Silva, Martin Gabel, Steve Brodie, Raymond Burr

Synopsis: It took nerve for director Joseph Losey to attempt a remake of Fritz Lang's classic chiller M, but by and large Losey was up to the challenge. David Wayne steps into the old Peter Lorre role as the compulsive child-murderer who is tracked down and then placed on trial by the criminal underworld. Read More

As Young As You Feel

Actors: Monty Woolley, Thelma Ritter, David Wayne, Jean Peters, Constance Bennett

Synopsis: Based on a story by Paddy Chayefsky, this is the tale of a man who is being forced to retire from his job, at the age of 65, and decides to fight back. Impersonating the head of the company, he sets out to convince them to get rid of their outmoded retirement policy and gives a creditable speech Read More

Up Front

Actors: David Wayne, Tom Ewell, Marina Berti, Jeffrey Lynn, Richard Egan

Synopsis: Up Front is based on the wartime newspaper cartoons by Stars and Stripes contributor Bill Mauldin. Tom Ewell and David Wayne play Willie and Joe, the mud-caked, unshaven, war-weary protagonists of Mauldin's classic panels. The film is on the right track whenever using direct quotes from the Read More

My Blue Heaven

Actors: Betty Grable, Dan Dailey, David Wayne, Jane Wyatt, Mitzi Gaynor

Synopsis: In this musical comedy with dramatic touches, Jack and Molly Moran (Dan Dailey and Betty Grable) are a show business couple who, after hosting their own radio show, have just been given a deal to star in a TV series. They're also thrilled to discover that Molly is expecting a baby, but their joy Read More

The Reformer and the Redhead

Actors: June Allyson, Dick Powell, David Wayne, Cecil Kellaway, Ray Collins

Synopsis: MGM's The Reformer and the Redhead was the first directorial collaboration of longtime screenwriting partners Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. The reformer is Andrew Rockton Hale (Dick Powell), a mayoral candidate. Hale butts heads with a corrupt political machine, which has recently ordered the Read More

Stella

Actors: Ann Sheridan, Victor Mature, David Wayne, Randy Stuart, Marion Marshall

Synopsis: Stella is an out-of-left-field black comedy in which star Anne Sheridan is upstaged by an uproarious supporting cast. At a family picnic, a none too likeable uncle dies from accidentally eating poisoned mushrooms. The other family members don't want to be accused of murder, so they leave it to the Read More

Adam's Rib

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Holliday, Tom Ewell, David Wayne

Synopsis: Written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, Adam's Rib is a peerless comedy predicated on the double standard. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn play Adam and Amanda Bonner, a husband-and-wife attorney team, both drawn to a case of attempted murder. The defendant (Judy Holliday) had tearfully Read More

Portrait of Jennie

Actors: Joseph Cotten, Jennifer Jones, Ethel Barrymore, David Wayne, Lillian Gish, Florence Bates, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: In Portrait of Jennie, Joseph Cotten plays an artist, Eben Adams, who is unable to bring any true feeling to his work. While painting in Central Park one morning, Eben makes the acquaintance of a schoolgirl named Jennie (Jennifer Jones), who prattles on about things that happened years ago. Read More